


Apparitions

by macabre



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, Kidnapping, M/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A classic revenge story: Cobb is taken, and Arthur retaliates in the only way he knows how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparitions

The men who take him really have no idea; they don’t know about extraction or dreamshare, or really anything substantial about Cobb. What they seem to think they know is that Cobb is worth a lot – and he is, to certain people. After the inception job, Saito made sure their backgrounds were bulletproof, and these men latched onto his spotless past and ran it against a wanted file from years previous. They figured he must know some very powerful, very wealthy men.

The problem they run into is how to contact the men connected with Cobb, and before they can even find anyone close to Saito, Arthur finds them first. It takes him over a week because they’ve dragged him across the country to a backwards town they think they can hide in, but the locals don’t take kindly to strangers, and it ends up being their downfall, a beacon of activity on a desolate map.

“I’m going in tonight.”

“Darling, have you stopped to consider actually contacting Saito? I’m sure he’s got men who could be there in an hour.” Eames is patiently watching him prepare. Gun. Map. Phone. Die. Arthur rolls it between his fingers. Instinctively, Eames twists his poker chip in his hand.

“No. I’m going tonight.”

“Then I guess I’m coming with you.” He sighs dramatically, but hops up and pockets his chip while reaching for his automatic on the desk.

“You don’t have to.” He knows when Eames looks at him he still sees a little boy, at least in these situations. It irritates him to no end, but it’s not something they’ve shaken off in their acquaintance yet.

“You don’t know how many of them there are.”

Arthur shakes his head. “No more than five. Nothing I can’t handle alone.” He pulls apart his gun and checks everything, cleaning as he goes.

Eames grimaces, although Arthur doesn’t see it. “I think I need to be there in case of distraction.”

“What’s possibly going to distract me?” Arthur has his mind set. The plan active in his head. It’s going to simple.

Eames raises an eyebrow. “What happens when you see Cobb?”

 

 

 

What happens when they find Cobb is this: Arthur is first through the door because he can’t stand to wait for Eames to move any longer. It’s uncharacteristic, and he’s well aware of it even in this moment. He can hear his heart in his ears and it hasn’t been like this in a long time, even on the inception job when faced with limbo, he was able to stay in control because Cobb was able to stay in control.

There are three men in the front hall, and they’re all dealt with fairly quickly and easily – shot or incapacitated in some way so they’re down but not yet out. Arthur expressly told Eames they’d leave them all alive unless an emergency made it impossible, and when his partner just raised another eyebrow, Arthur met him with a cold look and picked up their weapons. If one of them slips up and shoots to kill, it won’t be Arthur, even if he has the lesser amount of experience in combat in true reality.

Of course, the other men in the back room come out guns blazing when they hear the commotion in the hall. He hears Eames grunt when a gun is brought down over his head, but he remains standing and gets the assailant down a minute later. The other kidnapper gets a bullet right past Arthur’s gut – it grazes, and he feels the blood, but not the sting.

“There’s someone left inside the room,” Eames comments through his slight wheezing.

“Just one.” Arthur reloads, but slides the safety back on and puts the gun in its holster. “You tie up this lot. I can handle this.”

The man inside is waiting for him now, of course, and he puts up a decent fight before Arthur dodges enough bullets and even a knife before he’s close enough to land a punch. In his peripheral, Arthur makes out the shape of Cobb tied with his hands above his head in the middle of the room. He doesn’t spare him a proper glance yet.

A crunch and the man before him screams, bending over onto his knees in front of Arthur. “You the boss?” Was he the one who decided to take him? The man doesn’t answer, panting in pain. Arthur has his back mostly to Cobb, but he keeps him in his sidelines, and from here he can make out slight movement. When he doesn’t hear him say anything, Arthur knows he’s hurt badly, otherwise he’d be giving his point man some kind of warning.

Arthur breaks the man’s other leg, then ties his hands with tight plastic. By this time, Eames has appeared in the doorway, swearing and moving towards Cobb. “You alright?” He asks Arthur as he stands with Cobb, gingerly supporting him.

“I’m fine,” he says, although he hasn’t turned around yet. His side is still bleeding; he can feel the fibers of his shirt meshing into the wound. But it’s over. For now.

When he looks at Cobb finally, he’s to be as expected – cut and bruised and bloody, an eye swollen too tightly to see through, and he can’t seem to use one hand because of swelling. He doesn’t even try to smile for Arthur. When the point man takes his other side, he asks, “Gave them hell, boss?”

The only answer he gets is a wet noise, and a wetter kiss at his forehead. Later, at the hospital, Arthur looks long and hard at the bloody print left behind on the skin there, and decides to leave it for now. His side newly stitched and clean, and both Cobb and Eames in stable conditions, he leaves the hospital without saying anything. He trusts Eames will sit with Cobb for a few hours. It won’t take long for what he’s about to do.

When a subject’s mind is untrained or unprepared for shared dreaming, one must enter and leave with extreme finesse or risk the mind going into total denial and eventually shock. Arthur for once doesn’t worry about it. He plunges into the predators’ turned prey minds, and from this he knows for sure that their motives didn’t go very deep, but unluckily for them, Arthur doesn’t care. He’ll spare their lives, even take them to the hospital next, but before that he figures he’ll just rid the world of a few more petty criminals.

He makes it back to the hospital before Cobb is conscious to miss him. He’s sitting bedside when Dom wakes up enough to place his surroundings. “Thank you.” It’s the first thing he says. Arthur just nods and tells him to get some rest. He’s already booked their tickets home; the children are waiting for them.

While Cobb rests, Eames does not. Afraid of a concussion, he isn’t allowed to sleep for twenty-four hours, resulting in him not only being an obnoxious ass for the entire period, but also harassing Arthur about leaving him in the hospital while he disappeared. He doesn’t ask where Arthur went.

“What happens when you return home?” He does ask, relishing the fact he’s in a hospital gown and he can flash as many people as he’d like and blame it on drugs. “Will you ground Cobb? Install a tracking device on him? Tie him to the bed?”

Arthur has his die in his hand, standing in the doorway of Eames’ room but looking out across the hall to Cobb’s. “The threat has always been there. We’ll just be more careful. We were lucky this time.”

“Could have been other extractors.”

“Could have been anyone not concerned about money.”

Eames agrees, or actually harasses his way into coming home with them for a while. “For the sake of my health. Don’t want me to slip into a coma because I was traveling alone, now do we?”

“You were medically cleared two days ago,” Cobb comments while poking through the standard hospital food. He hasn’t eaten much since they arrived, and even less before that. He’s lost the sturdiness of build that Arthur so loved about his body. When they get home, he’ll start cooking until he gains all the weight back.

The day they depart the hospital, the nurses insist in wheeling Dom out of the building to the taxi. They stop in the reception area and wait for Arthur, still signing papers. They stare as long at the ring on his finger as they do the die he keeps in his free hand. It’s a small hospital in the middle of nowhere, and the men they treated are from California, they mumble. It’s not uncommon there.

Cobb isn’t wearing his ring; it’s not the first one lost during their business. He’s tracing the pale line around his finger when Arthur approaches, and doesn’t bother looking up as he pushes the wheelchair out the door. Eames helps him get Dom settled inside the car, and once on the flight home, falls asleep without interruption now that he can sleep all he’d like.

The blonde beside him is quiet, happy to be going home after the past two weeks, and Arthur supposes that’s all it is. In their line of work, they never take for granted the return journey. Dom is sitting next to the window, leaving Arthur in the middle to buffer between a drooling Eames. Arthur’s shoulder is fast growing damp.

When he turns to Arthur, he pulls his hand from the smaller man’s. “You didn’t think I wouldn’t notice my kidnapper staying in the hospital room down the hall from mine, did you?”

Arthur says nothing, but he’s thinking to himself that the men weren’t in that area of the hospital long. He didn’t think Cobb would see them.

“They certainly didn’t recognize me. Didn’t recognize much of anything, apparently. How long were they there before psych took them?”

“Five hours. Six tops.” There wasn’t much physically wrong with them, after all. The worst of it a broken bone or two, ugly bullet wounds but nothing deadly. Well, it wasn’t the worst of it.

“Arthur.” It’s that warning tone he missed in the room when finding the other man. “You shouldn’t have.”

There are many things Arthur shouldn’t have done, and it doesn’t end with falling in love with a man who at the time had a wife, and a family, and even after the wife was gone, sticking around to pick up the pieces. He can’t help but wonder what their relationship would be had he not been the one to shadow him every day for the past seven years, the better part of his own adult life. If he had just worked with Cobb every once and again like they do with Eames now. Could or would Cobb be the way he is now?

In his dreams, under the influence of Somnacin as necessary, Cobb answers him. “There’d be nothing without you.” The city around them falls, but Arthur wakes up in their shared room where the voices of children drift up the stairs and when he hears Cobb’s voice this time, there is no dreamy, tin-like quality of it. It’s clear and deep and annoyed.

“Something wrong?” He asks, barefoot in the kitchen, wearing a pair of Dom’s old sweats. They feel good on him, but he wears them more for the effect of driving the other man crazy.

Cobb sighs. “No.” He puts his chin in his hand, watching James chase Phillipa with sticky fingers. “No, everything’s fine.” He’s wearing the biggest hoodie Arthur could find in the closet because it was the only thing that could fit over the excessive bandaging on his side, his eye is still purple, and he holds his injured hand protectively on his lap, close to his side. Eames comes bellowing out of the yard, scaring the children in delight, and they both turn and run together towards the house again. Arthur is just happy Eames has no excuse to wear anything less than modest clothing now.

“There are things you don’t have to do for me, you know.”

“I know.” But there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for him, Arthur thinks. Even let himself turn into a monster.

Everything doesn’t look fine, but Arthur chooses to believe that it is.


End file.
